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June 19 - July 12, 2017
“To the women passing through our neighborhood,” a big sign on the street outside says, “please do not pass in our neighborhood in immodest clothes.” The parts of a woman’s flesh that are not required to be covered are: face and fingers. Some women here, I see and cannot believe my eyes, take “modesty” one step further: they are showing not one iota of flesh, not even their eyes, and when they walk on the street they look like huge black trash bags in movement. Are they the Jewish Taliban? In my day women like these did not exist. Jerusalem has gotten holier, I think.
Here’s an item called Shikshukit. What is it? I ask the waiter. “Minced meat with tahini and yogurt. It is good for your health, good for salvation, cures cancer, good for having male children, and it comes with roasted tomatoes.” I think Al-Jazeera should hire this person as their chief correspondent. I try the Shikshukit. It’s not as promising as I had hoped, but it beats flying camels, menstruating rabbis, and Iranian love.
Frankly, today is not the best day to go to the Mount of Olives. Today is the first Friday of Ramadan, which in Jerusalem translates into Day of Anger: disturbances, stone throwing, bullets flying, and a long list of other possible goodies.
I meet a young kid, a grandson to one of the white volunteers here, and I play with him. We get to like each other, and joke together. Then, after a while, I ask him some stupid questions. One of them is this: When you grow older, would you like to marry an Ethiopian woman? I could arrange one for you, would you like me to do it? “No.” Why not? “No.” Why? “Because.” What do you think, black people are good? “No.” What makes them bad? The child catches sight of his older brother who is gesturing him to shut up and he does. It always amazes me how hard it is for one people not to discriminate
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“He who cannot explain his thesis in simple words is he who has no thesis.”
Normally, when I arrive in a new place I try to taste the food its people eat, which is exactly what I want to do now, only here I encounter a big problem: no restaurants. The Haredi of Bet Shemesh don’t go to restaurants because they believe that restaurants are from the devil. In restaurants, after all, men and women can meet and then the men, God forbid, might get an erection when biting into a chicken’s leg while looking at a Taliban.
They respond by saying that a Jew is a unique being, a preferred being, a chosen being, a being born with a “Jewish soul.”
“Every human being has a soul. Don’t you know that?” Jewish and non-Jewish? “Yes, of course.” And the non-Jewish soul is like that of animals, let’s say dogs, but the Jewish soul is Godly. Right? “We didn’t say that. We said that the Jews, by God’s design, have a different soul.” Sorry. What does this mean? “If you don’t know what a soul is, there’s nothing to talk about.” Well, maybe you could explain to me. “A soul, you don’t know what it is?” Honestly, I don’t. This creates a new discussion, esoteric in language, absurd in thought, and totally incomprehensible to me. I hear words flying
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I think of the stray cats in my garden, and how happy they were making love in public. Most likely they will be reincarnated as Jewish whores. That will be fun.
The Middle East being the Middle East, a place where loyalties can form and break at the sound of the wind, some of those wounded in Syria’s war have crossed the border to Israel, to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Syria is one of Israel’s most bitter enemies, but Israel is the one place that separates the wounded from death. I safely arrive
European NGO activists are also great linguists. “You called me ‘imbearable,’” she shouts at me. I ask her what “imbearable” means, since I don’t even know this word, much less use it myself.
I think: These Jews are here not because Auschwitz forced them to be here. No. They are here because this earth is the expression of their souls. They and the mountains are one. The Christians believe in a Trinity, and these people too, only their Trinity is different: God, Earth, and Jews. This land for them is the breast of the Lord, from which they suck their milk. In Hebrew they frame it thusly: Torat Israel, Am Israel, and Eretz Israel, the Torah of Israel, the Nation of Israel, and the Land of Israel, are one.